Dreams 13
Russel You are a child, playing in the grass with all your friends -- Moore, Joan, Matheson, Luo, Adams, and a few dozen others. The games are raucous -- tag, dodgeball, red rover: rough and tumble, and enormous fun... until the hide and seek starts. It seems delightful at first, the failed attempts at cheating on counts and exposing the hiding places of others, until it becomes clear that children are going away. Griffith is first, then Evelyn, Tim and Doug cannot be found. Their hiding skills must be excellent. Everyone is still having fun, though you are beginning to have doubts. Chip, Jim, Martin, Pierce, Tony -- all disappear. Consensus is that they had to go home, or grew tired, or fell asleep in their secret places. You are "it", and grow disturbed when you find everyone but Charlie and Sam. The group dwindles, Hidalgo rushes screaming into the woods, and you enter each subsequent game with more and more trepidation. Night begins to fall, and you want to end the games, but Billy and Joan are adamant about continuing. You look around, and Mother and Father are watching, tall and imposing in the distance, on opposite sides of the yard. Only a little comforted, you hide once more, listening to the fading voice counting down from fifty, skipping a few numbers, and realise you are suddenly no longer in the yard, but in the woods, in the dark, with wolves howling in the distance, a chill wind, and no one looking for you but the glittering stars above. XianQi There are a dozen images, all of you -- mimicking and mocking you, fractured and scattered in all directions. You move through the maze, confronted with hideous representations of your form -- fat, skinny, unbalanced, disproportionate, and the occasional glimpse of other travellers through the confusion, equally stunned and discomfited by what they witness. You quickly become disoriented and somewhat panicked. You eventually find your way out, dizzy and nauseated and dispirited. Adams You are in New York, investigating the latest peccadilloes of Hollywood's biggest rising star of the moment. You have followed him to a movie opening with a promising starlet, and then to a late night poker game, and then to a speakeasy where he picks up an impressionable young ingenue. You are snapping photos, cursing the bad light, as they enter the hotel, when you are accosted by his bodyguards. You turn, finding a dead end, and stumble to the ground, finding a frightened rat under a dumpster. Smashing it quickly under your fist, you mutter the words "Vernek Zhathog, breemn shanthegr zervahring". Feeling suddenly braver you take their blows, to no effect, surprising your assailants. You are not much of a fighter, but with their efforts having no effect, you manage to drive them away with, you are somewhat proud to say, not a few minor injuries. Matheson You are among an enormous mass of dirty, sweating, miserable men, straining under a creaking rope, and recoiling from the occasional whiplash. The bright noonday sun is intolerable, the dry desert heat enervating and sapping your will. There is a massive construction before you, the kind of engineering project that careers are spent arranging, and lifetimes completing. A massive building, thousands of feet on a side, and presumably to be equally as tall, constructed entirely with the sweat, blood, and pain of simple brute labor. Your captors and fellow slaves are equally incomprehensible to you, babbling in different foreign, guttural tongues, expecting you to comply with whatever unknown command or request you have been given. Unable to communicate, you quickly succumb to the temperature and unaccustomed labor, passing out before the angry eyes of the masters, and the frightened visages of the workers. Category:Dreams Log